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for 2009. I used Kaisercraft's Belle Collection....totally gorgeous papers that can be used for Christmas or any other time of the year. I found a spark brush recently and just love playing with it....it truly adds a special touch.

OMG..

we've just measured 4 inches (100mm) from overnight rain and it's still raining! The overflow channel from the Washpool is flooded and we can see it from the house. While we would never say no to rain, we are now worried about the sheep in a paddock where the creeks go through. As long as none were amongst the channels, they'll be alright.

Our total rainfall is now almost 9 inches.

The pups are complaining that there's nowhere dry outside for them to play...not even under the house!

We've just learnt that our neighbour to the south measured 5 inches overnight!

Look who's snuggled in Nathan's sandpit:

More rain!

So far since Dec 20th we have received 436 pts (109mm) of lovely rain! The green in the paddocks becomes brighter everyday, water continues to run into dams and it's terribly hot and muggy...BUT no complaining here! More storms are forecast for the rest of the week. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it rained every day......

There's Rain

It was wonderful to wake on Christmas morning and find we'd had 2 inches (50mm) of rain! What a wonderful gift! During the day more showers added another 60pts (15mm) to our total. Martin checked a few dams and found a couple of feet of water in our house dam, another dry dam half full and another with the backwater full. This morning we can see a green shoot in the buffel grass.

This gorgeous little girl is my Christmas present form Craig and Kathryn. Khloee is almost 7 weeks old and weighs a neat 1kg, so you can imagine how little and fine she is. Like Charli, she's a mini foxie. She lets the boys know she's no pushover getting the skids after them when she thinks necessary. Charli wasn't too sure of her at first and is not keen to share my lap, but he's warming to her.....this morning they were sharing toys and playing. I must say she has a much better yap than Charli....we are hoping his voice will break!



At the moment we have 7 dogs here as Craig brought his heeler and we are pup sitting for our neighbour!

Turn-Off Decoration

Here is our turn-off decoration for this Christmas. We were very lucky to have the length of fluming to make the chimney. We also have a big star and tree in ropelights on our high tank stand....shall try and photograph it to share with you.

Here he is!

Zapp sitting obediently! lol Gotta love Adam's sense of humour!!

Our young neighbour Hilary was introduced to Zapp yesterday and he gave her quite a chuckle too!

Zapp, the red dog.

On Thursday night, as we headed down to the sheepyards, Adam said "Mum, you'll get some help tonight from Zapp, the yard dog. "

Me: Okay, and who's dog is he? (Thinking he belonged to one of the shearers.)

Adam: Wait and see...but you're gonna love him! He rides on the back of the sheep, bites when necessary, barks when stirred, sits and stays on command and generally does a brilliant job! He has many hidden talents; I'll show you tonight.

Well when I saw Zapp, I couldn't stop laughing....and when I can take a photo of him, you'll see why. But Adam was right, he came in very useful and did do a brilliant job! His only drawback? He doesn't come when called. Bonus? He's very cheap to feed and unlike 3 little pups I know, doesn't get into mischief.

I made good use of Zapp on Thursday night and then allowed Adam to use him when we drafted last night...

Layout Share

I couldn't get any of the challenges for the SWV December Cybercrop because of not having the spare time AND no printer ink. Yesterday I was just itching to get some scrapping done.

I loved the sound of Jodi's mystery challenge, she is such a talented lady. Here is my end result, however I used one photo instead of three.

Tina gave us a sketch challenge. The original sketch is from the talented Beggahuna.

Here is my version of it.


This morning we were out mustering by 5.30am and tonight we are drafting again after dinner...so we're headed for a very long day, especially for one little boy.

Are we mad??

Last night we went down to the shed and drafted 1500 ewes and their lambs...yep...last NIGHT! The days (until this week) have been so hot, that Martin decided to set up a floodlight so we could draft by night.

So at about 7.30pm and after a very early dinner, we headed off. The yards were already full, with more ewes in the netting yard. I'd been told the yards had been watered to settle the dust...well not where I was working!! The sheep did rattle through and in no time at all we were moving those out of the netting yard and drafting again. The drawback?? Stumbling around in the half light at the back of the yards and stumbling over gidyea stones, water pipes and buffel grass stubble!! While Adam was bounding around like a bandicoot (how he can do that after being up since 5am beats me) I preferred to have one foot on the ground at all times. By 9.30pm Nathan was exhausted and found a woolpack to lie on near the race while we finished up. At 10pm we headed home to a shower and bed. "We should draft at night all the time!" was Martin's comment...yeh...and when would we sleep?

Tomorrow night it all happens again!

Nathan and I had the opportunity to take some Christmas photos today. Of course Charli had to be involved too. This photo is one of the best, although neither is smiling!

Getting Adam in a photo is almost impossible, so shall work on that next week when craig and Kathryn are home too.

Shearing got underway this morning. We've had drizzly rain on and off last night and most of today...only enough to be a darned nuisance. however, the weather is way cooler and much better for the shearers.

A long week

This has been a long and busy week, with Monday being our only slower day. We ducked in to town to meet Adam off the bus, only to find the bus was early and he'd been waiting 20 minutes! Oh well that happens. That afternoon we slipped up to our neighbour's for the party of a special little girl celebrating her 3rd birthday...I can't believe how quickly she's growing up. Soon she will be a big sister...

We brought three pups home with us...thank goodness only one will live here...Martin has called his pup "Killer" yeh right!! He's more likely to run up and give you a big lick more so than chew your leg!


And these two are off to Brisbane. This little cute fluffy guy is Kathryn's pup....she's still pondering on a name for him.


This little blue fella is called "Kegs"

Charli loves having some playmates and they've all had their fair share of blues, but eventhough he's so much smaller than them (and twice their age) he gives as good as he gets!

On Tuesday we started mustering for shearing. As the days are so hot, there are 5am starts, a break doing other jobs for a few hours then mustering again resuming at 5pm. On Wednesday we walked a mob of about 2 000 ewes plus their lambs to a paddock closer to the shed, not getting there until 7.50pm. Thank goodness for headlights and luckily there wasn't any traffic as they crossed the main road. Hopefully we didn't leave any lambs hiding under bushes!

Rain for 2009 has been few and far between with our only decent fall for the year coming at Easter. However it didn't cover all of our country. We now have two empty dams, another that's getting very low (it hasn't had any water added to it for about 2 years) and our house dam will only last another fortnight! Martin and Adam shifted the rams from the Ram Paddock as they keep getting bogged in the dam and they are wayyyy to expensive to lose.



Dry dams are a very sad and sorry sight. Hopefully there will soon be respite from the heat and good soaking rains, but it's certainly too late for a green Christmas....maybe New Year??

OTP Items

I have been busily creating OTP items lately...what do you think?

I plan to sell them at our Twilight Markets tomorrow evening.....hopefully anyway! All going well, I should get some more completed this afternoon and tomorrow morning.

Secret Santa

A Secret Santa swap is happening at Scrap with V at the moment and my parcel arrived this morning!! Check this out:

A beautifully decorated Advent Calendar tree, some bling Christmas tree ornaments and some balloons (Nathan will have so much fun with them). Are they all so gorgeous? But wait....there's more....the box included another parcel with a note saying that it had to go under the Christmas tree and be opened Christmas moring! My gorgeous and very generous Secret Santa lives at Gunnedah....thank you so very much, I absolutely love it.